


if we met at midnight (in the hanging tree)

by maplewoodmoth



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Over the Garden Wall Fusion, M/M, The Unknown (Over the Garden Wall), so now y’all jerks have to deal with it with me, this came to me in a dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19946419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplewoodmoth/pseuds/maplewoodmoth
Summary: Seasons change and winter creeps forwards; one of the Enochs waits expectantly for his Beast in the quiet of the dusk.





	if we met at midnight (in the hanging tree)

**Author's Note:**

> Horatio and Hamlet as Enoch and the Beast respectively from Over the Garden Wall, with a few bits changed here and there. Could also be a Hades and Persephone AU.

Horatio tends to his domain; the vegetables grow, the harvest comes, and the newly dead are unburied and welcomed among the midst of them all. 

Still, as the seasons turn and fall approaches, it is not these things he waits ardently for, though it is his duty, but for the arrival of another he is searching. 

Each day another inch of winter strides forwards and each sunset he waits along it’s edge, watching the woods, watching the frost creep in with the night.   
**

The Beast comes as he always does; like a wind rattling through the empty trees, like an exhale of death- of torment and lament, like frost on the cover of a pond.

Expected and unwelcome and oh so full of bitterness. 

The denizens of the harvest wander around, searching for their Lord in this dusk quiet. One of them manages to stumble upon something, but it is definitely not the Cryptid he was hoping for. 

“Alas” the Beast/Hamlet/Beast rumbles, “poor Yorrick. Ah,” he sighs, “i knew him well”

“My dear” Horatio whistles, “put down the poor fellow, he’s shaking in his stalks.”

And when the young thing, that newly dead, scurries away, shaking in his gourd, does Horatio turn to Hamlet, sliding close towards him until the other is almost completely ensconced in his vines and leaning close. 

Says, “you know you didn’t have to do that to the poor thing, now he’ll spread such horrid tales about you.”

Hamlet shrugs “we all feed somehow” he defers coyly, looking at Horatio from under his cloak of shadows. “You feed through your convoluted schemes, and I feed on fear. Where that fear comes from matters not, but causing it does help.”

Hamlet the Beast and Enoch Horatio look at each other for a moment, the silence of the coming quiet enfolding the area gently in its hands. And then the silence breaks, cracks, with their chirps and crackling caws of laughter. 

Wrapped up in each other as they are, they are content. 

The winter is coming, the harvest has arrived, and they are together once more. It is time to celebrate, and Hamlet leads Horatio off into the shadows to do so.

**Author's Note:**

> Might write an Orpheus and Eurydice version, or another AU next depending on how I feel.


End file.
